Category: Family

Hope everyone had a great (and safe) 4th of July.

We woke up late; Mario around 11:30 (and the boys, too) and Alaethia and I around 12. I did everything I needed to do the night before (tacos for dinner, dishes, sweeping, and I even made a batch and a half of banana bread!) and had another late night with Alaethia. So we thought it a really good idea to sleep in. We got ready at our leisure, packed everything up that we needed then all of us, and Mom, went to visit Gramma and wish her a happy birthday.

She was happily sitting in her wheelchair, and she told us Aunt Nora had just stopped by to visit her, too. Mom gave her the gift she bought her (we’re giving her ours this Saturday) and I wrote her name and her room number on her clothes. That’s also why I carry a sharpie with me everywhere I go; just in case we stop by Gramma’s and she needs her things labeled.

We fixed her closet, took many pictures with her and talked for a good while. Then we went to Home Depot, where Mario got some tools he needed and I got a nice Stanley level and a few supplies to finish up the walls in the bathroom. I’m doing it. If I don’t, then it’ll stay that way for another year.

We came home and chilled out at Mary’s before everyone got here. Noelia had arrived with the souvenirs she and Andy’d gotten everyone at Disneyworld. They got Mary and I charm bracelets; mine had a diamond-ish encrusted Mickey head and Tinkerbelle on it. I love them. I shall go crazy ordering charms and have the noisiest, charmiest charm bracelet evar.

They got Mario a really cute (and tall) shot glass from the Jurassic Park ride at Universal (I have fond memories of getting the crap scared out of me in that one) and got the boys a Pirates of the Caribbean skull full of Pirate Booty for the boys. It was one price for as much as they could stuff into the skull. I thought it was really sweet that Andy stood there picking out two of each item so the boys wouldn’t fight. That’s why they’ve always been in love with their new uncle!

We had burgers, hot dogs, potato salad, ice cream cake from Dairy Queen (my absolute favorite; to celebrate Natalie’s birthday) and apple pie a la mode. There sadly weren’t enough burgers, which made me feel bad, and momentarily caused me to get in a bad mood since Mario sacrificed his burger and gave it to me and I wanted HIM to have it. I know how much he likes his burgers.

Everything was delicious. All the women sat around the table, as is our custom, talking and laughing while the men were outside doing their man things, like drinking beer. The kids were all at our house next door in the boys’ room playing video games (supervised by the older cousins). When it was 9pm, we all went out to watch the kids pop their fireworks. There were mosquitoes all over the place so, humid as it was, I wrapped Alaethia up in a receiving blanket to avoid them eating her up. She still ended up with a huge bite on her cheek, but what can you do?

(This part was continued on Friday, July 6th.)

Eenan, Angela, Noelia and Andy were all playing War with poppers. Jaylen was following Mario around, assisting with (picking out) the fireworks. I think Mario had more fun than the kids did. First he lit a whole two packs of Morning Glories and just held them in his hands, all happy.

It looked impressive, but I’m just so glad he’s still got both hands.

And this is what, mmm, about 8 boxes of Sparklers look like when lit all at once. I’m so glad he decided NOT TO HOLD THESE!

Crazy. The whole cone burst into flames shortly after.

It was a fun night. We let the kids all finish off their fireworks before everyone went home. Then each of the kids took a shower, because they were so disgustingly sweaty. Alaethia felt so good after her bath that she fell right to sleep, so I put her in her crib and took the fastest shower in history. I got the boys into bed and as I’m walking out to close the door, Eenan starts screaming bloody murder. About a second later, Jaylen joins in because Eenan freaked him out. I’d forgotten to turn on their night light and instead of reaching up (it’s right above Eenan’s bed) and flipping it on, they ran through the dark hallway after me, thus waking up Alaethia. I finally had her asleep early and was going to fall asleep myself, but nope, didn’t happen. She didn’t fall asleep, again, till 2:30am.

Not much happened yesterday except that John got hired at a second job like he wanted. (And I had yet another dream that his car had gotten broken into…weird.) It was cool that they actually went to him and asked him if he’d like to work there still. He said, “Sure!” and immediately got hired. And he said that would never happen to him!

I was halfway done with this blog last night when I was going to finish up with laundry and call it a day. Well, I’d washed four loads of laundry and the 2nd one never dried. The first one was Alaethia’s and that one dried fine. The 2nd one was the darks and I thought maybe they just weren’t drying because I overstuffed it. I took some out, let it dry another half hour and nothing. Mario suggested, at 12:30am, that I should go and dry everything next door at my mom’s house. Sure, buddy. And stay awake till 3am waiting? No thanks. Alaethia already keeps me up till 2:30. So I made a makeshift line (an electrical cord stretched between two kitchen chairs — L33t) and just hung everything on hangers to dry. And of course, Aly stayed awake till 2:30 as I expected. And I tossed and turned most of the night because they’d turned the air off at Mary’s (the houses are connected and so’s the darn central air…grr) and once they turned it on at 5am, I kept tossing and turning because I was freezing. Grr.

I thought I was going to have to drop Mario off this morning, since we’re going to the movies and didn’t want to have to take two cars, but I’m just going to pick him up then go get his truck afterwards. He’s working half a day today and then we’re going to watch Transformers. Oh yeah, baby! I have a feeling today’s going to be AWESOME.

(OOH, it’s the 4th now! HAPPY 4TH OF JULY, EVERYONE! Have a great one!)

Since Alaethia didn’t fall asleep till 2am and I stayed up finishing the layout/uploading the blog till 2:30am, I was having a hard time falling asleep. Didn’t help that there was thunder rumbling outside. By the time I did fall asleep I was so exhausted I slept like a rock till 6:00, when I heard Alaethia coughing and eventually choking. After making sure she was okay I got back into bed and, once again, had a hard time going to sleep. The alarm went off an hour and a half later so I unwillingly rolled out of bed and groggily ironed.

I stayed awake even after Mario left to work because Jaylen and Alaethia woke up as soon as Mario walked out the door. He wanted cheesy eggs and apple juice, so I obliged. I knew, from the night before, that Eenan wanted Cocoa Pebbles for breakfast so I got all that ready for him and made to go back to bed. Mary knocks on the door and asks if I wanted to go to the movies after all. Shoot. I’d totally forgotten she’d invited us yesterday. I decided not to go since I wasn’t going to get a chance to shower and there was no way I was leaving the house without one. Plus, Alaethia was still awake and quickly getting moody since she’s usually asleep at that time. There was no way she’d let me watch the movie in peace. So I gave the boys quick showers and they left with Mary to watch Ratatouille (sp?). Another movie I miss!

I tried going to sleep after Alaethia went to sleep. I was quickly getting tired of tossing and turning so I was about to give up and just make some coffee. Next thing I remember is my heart trying to escape my chest and springing out of bed after having a horrible dream that a big, huge man was trying to force himself on me in his truck. Ugly, ugly dream.

I just chilled out with Alaethia and then Mom once she was back from her doctor’s appointment. I mentioned how she’d been throwing up and I was pointing the finger at her pills? Well, turns out she was taking 4 more pills A DAY than she should have been. I wrote a note for her to give to her doctor, asking her to please write down her medications and dosages and that’s when I realized she’d been doubling up on some. My Mother. She spent a whole month feeling like crap when she could have prevented it by just reading some labels. Now she’s going to have to go in for more lab work and she was referred to a gastrointestinal specialist, just in case. They’re only taking precautions, but I’m a bit worried about that since stomach cancer runs in our family. I’m just glad she lives next door or who knows what shape she’d be in.

Mary and the kids got back a little later and Mom stayed with the kids while I accompanied Mary to find a gift for Natalie. It was still a bit overcast since it’d rained the whole night before, but there were no signs of it raining at the time. When we’re getting into Palmview we can see lightning streaking down and thunder crashing every few seconds and it was pouring. It was scary–I’m so not used to that during broad daylight. We get into Mission and are shocked to see just how flooded it is over there. The frontage roads were flooded going East and West. The water reached the bottom of the doors of cars and as we got further into the street (Conway), it was even worse. When we got to the shop and just sat there contemplating when it would be a good time to get down. The water would come and go, almost as if someone was tossing huge buckets of water on the car. At one point it got really silent so we hurried out just to be hit with a huge splash of water!

We didn’t find anything at the shop, unfortunately, so we went off to McAllen. Big mistake. It was awful. There were people stranded, just waiting at the Big Tex juice factory because they couldn’t get out of the parking lot because of how flooded it was. There was cops everywhere. We found something for her at the next shop (whose roof had broken a few inches and half the store was flooded!) and it wasn’t too bad over there, but coming back East it was awful. There was even an SUV that turned on it’s side near a Kmart, which later came out on the news. It was chaos–I’d never expected it to flood like that over here! I can’t even imagine how it’s like for the people in Kansas and North Texas.

I’d called Mario to work to see how it was over there, because that area (which is where I used to live) floods even when there aren’t Flash Flood warnings. Sure enough, he said he’d had to put on rain boots and rain coat just to walk outside.

I still can’t believe I forgot my camera, though. Darnit. The ONE TIME I take it out of my bag!

I was too glad to be home. While Alaethia napped I fixed a few things here and there on the layout and I almost died when Frontpage got an error and SHUT DOWN on me. I’d lost all my new work. THEN, to my absolute horror, I realize the file size is ‘0’. I open the file again and sure enough, it’s gone. After counting to 10 about 5 times I noticed the .css had made a copy of itself in my server. THANK GOD. So if you were on here at that time and everything was all wonky, that was why, heh.

I made tacos for dinner, then banana bread. I just finished up with that about half an hour ago. Mary gave me all these bananas that would definitely go bad if they weren’t eaten by today, so what better way to use extremely ripe bananas than make banana bread? I made a batch and a half. YUM! The boys will be thrilled in the morning (they’re sleeping over at their Nana’s).

I’m going to bed. Alaethia’s super moody. We had a scare earlier today where Ricky, Big Mario’s friend, called in a panic to tell us he’d been diagnosed with Shingles and he’d carried Alaethia yesterday. GULP. I hope she’ll be alright. She hasn’t had the Varicella or Measles shots yet, because she’s not of age yet, so help us pray that she’ll be alright!

I’m so excited. *squee* In 7-10 business days I will be the proud owner of this Toshiba Satellite Notebook! FINALLY! My old notebook (that Mario sold a few months ago) was also a Toshiba Satellite, but much slower with a lot less features. Mario actually broke and let me order it (on credit, of course). Good thing we paid off 4 of our other credit cards, buahaha.

I actually wanted the other Satellite that had one more Gig of RAM, but it was a measly $40 over my credit limit and I couldn’t get it. The nice lady I spoke to searched for all the features I wanted and found this one for me. The only difference is the 1 gig of RAM, but we can always upgrade up to 4 Gigs later on. And this one is almost $200 cheaper!

But anyway, I’m thrilled!

Another cool thing that happened today: Noelia and Andy gave us a microwave! Woo! We’d been needing a new one for quite some time already, since the one we had was over 8 years old, didn’t have the glass plate at the bottom anymore (Jaylen broke it when he was 3 and I was using a regular plate in its place), and it was the knob kind, not digital, so I could never tell how much I was warming up Alaethia’s food. And the new one’s much bigger than the other one. They didn’t even let us pay them for it. Bless them <3. The rest of today's activities included Mom, Alaethia and me (John stayed with the boys) going to Walmart and getting the 4th of July stuff Mom's contributing and Alaethia's formula and baby food jars. We witnessed a fender-bender in the parking lot. One of the cars was a Stratus like Mary's and it's good to know that if she ever gets in a fender-bender (*knock on wood*), her bumper would pop right back into shape! We also went to H-E-B for the apple pies and ice cream Mario and I are contributing. There, while standing in line to pay Mary's water bill I witnessed a grandmother wailing on her grandson while waiting in line to pay for her groceries. She smacked him on the mouth, pushed him around, shook him...it was awful. And nobody said anything! I would have, had I been much closer to them. The cashiers were a mixture of shocked and embarrassed...they looked so uncomfortable. At one point, the boy got so annoyed by her that he smacked her in the mouth! I’m afraid to know how violent that poor kid is at school. Who knew what he did or said to provoke the grandmother’s behavior, but there was no need for her to treat him that way. Ugh. People like that just irk me.

Anyway, Aly needs attention. Goodnight!